


Rage isn’t Red

by Cornerofmadness



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s01e19 The Professionals, Gen, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25721431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness
Summary: Malcolm wants his pound of flesh from Eddie but will getting it take him one step closer to being his father?
Kudos: 8
Collections: Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2020





	Rage isn’t Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TourmalineQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TourmalineQueen/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** Not mine, Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver owns it
> 
> **Notes:** written for classics_lover in comment_fic for the prompt of Prodigal Son, author's choice, Paint It Black

The harsh antiseptic smell found in every hospital stabbed at Malcolm’s senses as he slithered his way down the corridor. He should not be here. He knew that but he couldn’t be anywhere else. Nurses passed by him with barely a glance, their work loads enough to keep them busy and he didn’t appear to need their help. Being ignored was exactly what he wanted. The less people paying attention to him the better. He was grateful to not see a police presence in the hallway. They would stop him or at the very least recognize him. He might have gotten here before a guard could be organized and Eddie was most likely chained to his bed, not in any shape to move at any rate. That suited him just fine too. 

Malcolm paused before he got to Eddie’s door as a doctor walked by. To avoid being seen, Malcolm tucked just inside the door of someone completely asleep and alone in his room. He thought he might actually remember the doctor, a middle-aged woman, maybe from when his father was free or more likely on his own many trips to the hospital. She might have worked on him when he was hospitalized after Watkins buried several inches of steel inside him. His side stitched as if the mere memory could call up the agony he’d suffered. 

Naturally, with his brain, one bad memory dredged up another, one by one as if on a chain. The first memory to bob up was Eve’s body lying on Edrisa’s table cut from collar bone to pubis, the chill of her skin which had begun to slip from being in the water. Eve had not been perfect but she deserved better than what Eddie gave her. He kept the pain of her loss walled up tight, painted the door over, blackening it out, much like his mother had done with his father’s study. Out of sight, out of mind but no, never quite that. He could only wish for out of mind.

On the heels of Eve’s last moments came tumbling the memory of just a few hours ago when his father had been sagging, caught in Eddie’s garotte, choking out. Had been Mr. David been killed so Eddie could take his place? Malcolm hoped not. He liked the man. All anyone knew was he’d called in sick for a few days. Gil had promised someone would be sent to do a wellness check.

Malcolm inched closer to Eddie’s room, remembering the congested purpling of his father’s face thanks to this monster. Had Eve seen Eddie coming? Had she been afraid? In his imagination, she’d been terrified. He could all but taste that fear. Eddie deserved more than what the justice system would do to him. What a hypocrite he was because deep down Malcolm was _grateful_ his father had never faced true justice. As much as he hated the Surgeon, that was how much he loved Martin Whitly, the good father. The dichotomy in his heart sickened Malcolm but it had always been there, chewing on him. He wanted nothing more than to excise the good father from his heart but he couldn’t. His father had been kind and loving to him. He had done wonderful things with Malcolm, reading to him, taking him to museums, taking him to the woods, which now of course was completely tainted. He had fond memories of riding on his dad’s back, playing horse. He remembered his parents dancing spontaneously in the living room and making faces when they kissed. He remembered how his father applauded with abandon at every one of his dance recitals. He remembered a girl in a box.

Steeling himself, Malcolm slipped inside Eddie’s room greeted by silence, almost surprised that there wasn’t the incessant noise of the bedside monitors that he associated with hospitals. He remembered being awoken by his own more than once as it shrilled out his racing heart rate from nightmare after nightmare after Watkins had damaged him. The man who’d drowned Eve, who had tried to strangle his father seemed so small in this moment. Malcolm’s mind flashed back again to his father going to his knees. He couldn’t help himself then as he banged on the locked door, screaming his father’s name, that formal title he insisted on using because it was the only way he could keep Dad separate from the monster that was the Surgeon. Fear, the sheer horror of watching his father being methodically murdered, forced ten-year-old Malcolm to the surface. 

“Dad!” 

With that one word he’d advertised to Dani and JT that he still loved his father, something he always tried to keep buried, to keep those fond feeling at a distance. But he’d failed in that moment. Somehow it seemed to rally his father, and then true terror happened after that. He’d never seen his father kill, never saw the pure joy he took in killing until that moment. With the calm of an assassin like Eddie, Martin Whitly turned the tables and would have taken Eddie to pieces had JT and Dani not pulled him away.

A cold shiver raced up Malcolm’s spine calling a cold sweat to the surface of his skin and started his hand shaking as he remembered the sound of Eddie’s head hitting the floor repeatedly. It sounded like a coconut being forced open. He’d heard that once on a family trip to Hawaii. He might never eat coconut again. But then again, Eddie deserved every ounce of pain the Surgeon had inflicted. 

_He murdered Eve,_ Malcolm’s mind whispered to him and the cold sweats disappeared. _He took her from you. He nearly took your father. Are you going to let him do that?_

The deep rage Malcolm so often suppressed bubbled up, lava-hot and ready to burn. He let it all out. His hand stilled. He was angrier now that when he punched that sheriff, angrier even than when he hunted Watkins through his house and clubbed him down with a crowbar. The monster was out of his cage, painting Malcolm’s mind the color of night. His rage wasn’t red. It was the inkiness of crow feathers. He could hear them rustling in his imagination. Fear that he was just like his father died away, became unimportant. All that matter was giving to Eddie what that man had given to so many others.

Fueled by rage, Malcolm took two more steps in and stopped, studying the man who would be prey. Over his eyes rest blood-soaked gauze dressings, turning rusty at the edges but still bright crimson in the center. The squishy sound of his father’s thumbs digging Eddie’s eyes out of his skull echoed in his brain. Worse than that viscera-churning noise was the absolute glee in Martin’s eyes. The only regret his father had wasn’t that he nearly been killed, it was that they had stopped him from dissecting Eddie with whatever he might have at hand in his cell. The way he went for complaining about being strangled to chirping like Sunshine when he realized he got to meet JT birthed an iceberg in Malcolm’s gut. That was who his father was, _what_ he was: a psychopath who could switch murderous rage with sophisticated charm in a simple breath. 

Staring at the bloody gauze, smelling the salt and metals of Eddie’s blood in the air, Malcolm’s world shriveled to just two red points in a slack face. Eddie didn’t move as Malcolm took a step, still, so still, unaware of how close Malcolm had mentally toed the line in his head. He’d never know the prodigal son had almost come home to his killer father. Frightened and disgusted with himself, with his father, Malcolm turned around and walked out of the room.

He forced himself to be calm down the hall. _Don’t attract attention_. He jittered around in the elevator and by the time he was out on the street and heading for the subway – he didn’t want a record of a rideshare to the hospital – Malcolm was running. He didn’t calm until he was in a seat, rumbling away toward home. He’d failed. Eve wouldn’t get her justice from him but maybe that was okay. He hadn’t become his father. In the end, that mattered more for his sanity. The court of law would deliver Eve’s justice, and he was left with nothing but the ride home with his father in his head telling him _fear was always your stumbling block._ Maybe so, but tonight he could live with that.


End file.
